A trip of a lifetime

Today we are finally leaving Beijing, hopefully. I wake up really early after last night and have only had one hours sleep, hopefully that will mean I can sleep on the train. Tom finally gets up at about midday and we just chill out in the hostel and watch films while we wait for the train. At about 4:30pm we leave for the station. This time we have a soft seat and find the train no problem. We walk down, dreading that we will have another packed carriage, thankfully there is nobody standing and we get our seats no problem, which is a relief. We have a Chinese guy and Chinese girl sitting opposite us and the guy proceeds to pull out bag after bag of weird food and open them all and lay them out on the table. We both have a pot noodle and kindly decline the offer of his food. We chat with him and he teaches us a card game, but is constantly trying to get us to bet on the game, which seems to be complete and utter luck, similar to poker, but you just get five cards dealt ad whoever has the best wins. I am sure there was more to it than that, but we couldn’t understand. Then he tries for hours to explain that he thinks England will get to the quarter finals and either Spain or Argentina will win. With the girl next to him just in constant hysterics watching us try and work out what he is saying and him trying to explain. Finally a French student with a translator and a reasonable understanding of Chinese manages to work it out. By this time there is a crowd round us laughing and trying to assist! Tom is feeling really rough from last night and throws up several times, so didn’t really want t attention I don’t think. We both finally get a bit of sleep, but are constantly waking up.